The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

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James Corbett, Inside World Football

Monday, February 19, 2018

Valentine’s Day in Riyadh and Islamabad as well as parts of
Indonesia and Malaysia puts into sharp relief Saudi Arabia’s ability to curtail
the global rise of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism the kingdom helped fuel at
the very moment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is curbing some of its sharpest
edges in his own country.

To be fair, controversy over Valentine’s Day is not
exclusively a Muslim ultra-conservative preserve. Russian
and Hindu
nationalists have condemned the celebration as either contradictory to
their country’s cultural heritage or a ‘foreign festival.’

Yet, the Muslim controversy takes on greater global
significance because of its political, security and geopolitical implications. Its
importance lies also in the fact that it demonstrates that Saudi Arabia, after
funding the global promotion of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism for four
decades to the tune of $100
billion, has helped unleash a genie it no longer can put back into the
bottle.

The contrast between, yes, a socially liberalizing Riyadh,
and increasingly more conservative Islamabad; Indonesia’s Makassar, Surabaya
and arch-conservative Bandar Aceh; and Indonesia and Malaysia’s highest Islamic
councils could not be starker.

Banned for years from celebrating Valentine’s Day with shops
barred from hawking anything that was red or mushy cards that hinted at the
love feast, Saudis this year encountered a very different picture in markets
and stores. This year they
were filled with items in all shades of red.

One Saudi flower vendor reported that he had sold 2,000 red
roses in one day with no interference from the kingdom’s once dreaded religious
police.

Sheikh
Ahmed Qasim Al-Ghamdi, the outspoken former religious police chief, in a
reversal of the conservative religious establishment’s attitude, put Valentine’s
Day on par with Saudi Arabia’s National Day as well as Mothers’ Day.

“All these are common social matters shared by humanity and
are not religious issues that require the existence of a religious proof to
permit it,” Sheikh Ahmed said in remarks that were echoed by religious
authorities in Egypt and Tunisia.

While Saudis were enjoying their newly granted social
freedoms that include the lifting of a ban on women’s driving, Pakistanis were groping
with a second year of a Saudi-inspired ban, in part the result of the kingdom’s
pernicious support of ultra-conservatism in the country for more than six
decades.

The Islamabad
High Court last year banned public celebration of Valentine’s Day on the basis
of a private citizen’s petition that asserted that “in cover of spreading love,
in fact, immorality, nudity and indecency is being promoted –which is against
our rich culture.’

The ban followed a call on Pakistanis by President
Mamnoon Hussain to ignore Valentine’s, Day because it “has no connection
with our culture and it should be avoided.’

Official opposition highlighted the fact that Saudi-inspired
ultra-conservative attitudes have become entrenched within the Pakistani state
and would take years, if not a decade, to dislodge without creating even
greater havoc in the country.

While ultra-conservatism dominated attitudes in all of
Pakistan, countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were engaged in culture wars
with proponents of Saudi-influenced worldviews agitating against Valentine Day’s
or imposing their will in parts of the country where they were in control or
exerted significant influence.

Banda Ace in Ace province and Makassar on the island of
Sulawesi upheld their several years-old bans. Last year, Makassar’s municipal police
raided convenience shops on February 14 and seized condoms, claiming that they
were being sold ‘in an unregulated way’ to encourage people to be sexually
promiscuous on Valentine’s Day.

The actions were legitimized by a ruling in 2012 by
Indonesia’s highest Islamic council that stipulated that Valentine’s Day
violated Islam’s teachings.

The attitude of Malaysia’s
state-run Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) based on a fatwa or
religious opinion that it issued in 2005 is in line with that of their Indonesian
counterparts. JAKIM annually blames Valentine’s Day, that it describes as a Christian
holiday, for every sin in the book ranging from abortion and child abandonment
to alcoholism and fraudulent behaviour.

Authorities have over the years repeatedly detained youths
on Valentine’s Day on charges of being near someone of the opposite sex who is
not a spouse or close relative.

Valentine’s Day is often but one battleground in culture wars
that involve gay and transgender rights as well as the existence and
application of blasphemy laws and the role of Islam in society. The vast
majority of ultra-conservative protagonists have no link to Saudi Arabia but
have been emboldened by the kingdom’s contribution to the emergence of
conducive environments and opportunistic government’s that kowtow to their
demands.

The culture wars, including the Valentine’s Day battlefield,
suggest that Prince Mohammed’s effort to introduce a degree of greater social
freedom and plan to halt Saudi funding of ultra-conservatism elsewhere is
likely to have limited effect beyond the kingdom’s borders even though the
kingdom with its traditionally harsh moral codes is/was in the Muslim world in a
class of its own.

A Saudi decision earlier this month to surrender
control of the Great Mosque in Brussels in the face of Belgian criticism of
alleged intolerance and supremacism that was being propagated by the mosque’s
Saudi administrators appears at best to be an effort to polish the kingdom’s
tarnished image and underline Prince Mohammed’s seriousness rather than the
start sign of a wave of moderation.

Brussels was one of a minority of Saudi institutions that
was Saudi-managed. The bulk of institutions as well as political groupings and
individuals worldwide who benefitted from Saudi Arabia’s largesse operated
independently.

As a result, the Valentine’s Day controversy raise the
spectre of some ultra-conservatives becoming critical of a kingdom they would see
as turning its back on religious orthodoxy.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

China’s step into the maelstrom of the Middle East

17 February 2018

Author: James M Dorsey, RSIS

The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is even more evident in China’s trashing of its vow not to establish foreign military bases, which became apparent when it established a naval base in Djibouti and when reports surfaced that it intends to use Pakistan’s deep sea port of Gwadar as a military facility.

This contradiction between China’s policy on the ground and its long-standing non-interventionist foreign policy principles means that Beijing often struggles to meet the expectations of Middle Eastern states. It also means that China risks tying itself up in political knots in countries such as Pakistan, which is home to the crown jewel of its Belt and Road Initiative — the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Middle Eastern autocrats have tried to embrace the Chinese model of economic liberalism coupled with tight political control. They see China’s declared principle of non-interference in the affairs of others for what it is: support for authoritarian rule. The principle of this policy is in effect the same as the decades-old US policy of opting for stability over democracy in the Middle East.

It is now a risky policy for the United States and China to engage in given the region’s post-Arab Spring history with brutal and often violent transitions. If anything, instead of having been ‘stabilised’ by US and Chinese policies, the region is still at the beginning of a transition process that could take up to a quarter of a century to resolve. There is no guarantee that autocrats will emerge as the winners.

China currently appears to have the upper hand against the United States for influence across the greater Middle East, but Chinese policies threaten to make that advantage short-term at best.

Belt and Road Initiative-related projects funded by China have proven to be a double-edged sword. Concerns are mounting in countries like Pakistan that massive Chinese investment could prove to be a debt trap similar to Sri Lanka’s experience.

Chinese back-peddling on several Pakistani infrastructure projects suggests that China is tweaking its approach to the US$50 billion China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. The Chinese rethink was sparked by political volatility caused by Pakistan’s self-serving politics and continued political violence — particularly in the Balochistan province, which is at the heart of CPEC.

China decided to redevelop its criteria for the funding of CPEC’s infrastructure projects in November 2017. This move seemingly amounted to an effort to enhance the Pakistani military’s stake in the country’s economy at a time when they were flexing their muscles in response to political volatility. The decision suggests that China is not averse to shaping the political environment of key countries in its own authoritarian mould.

Similarly, China has been willing to manipulate Pakistan against its adversaries for its own gain. China continues to shield Masoud Azhar (who is believed to have close ties to Pakistani intelligence agencies and military forces) from UN designation as a global terrorist. China does so while Pakistan cracks down on militants in response to a US suspension of aid and a UN Security Council monitoring visit.

Pakistan’s use of militants in its dispute with India over Kashmir serves China’s interest in keeping India off balance — a goal which Beijing sees as worthy despite the fact that Chinese personnel and assets have been the targets of a low-level insurgency in Balochistan. Saudi Arabia is also considering the use of Balochistan as a launching pad to destabilise Iran. By stirring ethnic unrest in Iran, Saudi Arabia will inevitably suck China into the Saudi–Iranian rivalry and sharpen its competition with the United States. Washington backs the Indian-supported port of Chabahar in Iran — a mere 70 kilometres from Gwadar.

China is discovering that it will prove impossible to avoid the pitfalls of the greater Middle East. This is despite the fact that US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman seem singularly focussed on countering Iran and Islamic militants.

As it navigates the region’s numerous landmines, China is likely to find itself at odds with both the United States and Saudi Arabia. It will at least have a common interest in pursuing political stability at the expense of political change — however much this may violate its stated commitment to non-interference.

Dr James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Friday, February 16, 2018

It’s the pot calling the kettle black. As Saudi Arabia
accuses Iran of seeking to encircle it with its support for Houthi rebels in
Yemen as well as Qatar, the kingdom and the Islamic republic are extending
their bitter rivalry beyond the Middle East into the Caucasus.

The two countries’ latest battleground is oil-rich
Azerbaijan, an authoritarian, majority Shia Muslim but secular former Soviet
republic on Iran’s northern border with a substantial ethnic population in Iran
itself. Recent Saudi overtures came amid reports that Azerbaijan’ s security
services had warned the government about Iran’s
growing influence in the country.

The report suggested that an informal lifting in 2013 of a
ban on preaching by Islamic scholars linked to Iran that had been quietly
imposed in a bid to stem the flow of Azerbaijani Sunni Muslims joining the
Islamic State in Syria and Iraq had enabled the Islamic republic to make
inroads.

“Iran's religious activities have become particularly
successful,” said Azerbaijani journalist Kenan Rovshanoglu in a study
of religious freedom in the country.

Published by Turan, an independent news agency, the study
noted that 22 of Azerbaijan’s 150 madrassas or religious seminaries were controlled
by Iran.

Iran and Azerbaijan have long tiptoed around each other with
both countries concerned that the other could use its religious and/or ethnic
affinities to stir trouble. Azeri speakers account for at least a quarter of
Iran’s population.

Azerbaijan is, for its part, worried about Iran’s close ties
with Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked into a decades-long conflict
over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.

Iranian concerns about Azeri nationalism were fuelled when supporters
of Tractor Sazi FC, a top club in Tabriz, the capital of the Iranian province
of East Azerbaijan, that is a symbol of Iranian Azeri identity, chanted Azeri
nationalist slogans three years ago during protests against the
government’s environmental policy and alleged anti-Azeri corruption in soccer .

Araz is operated by the National Resistance Organization of
Azerbaijan (NROA), a coalition of opposition forces dominated by the
Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a group that enjoys Saudi support but was tainted when it
moved its operations in 1986 to Iraq at a time that Iraq was at war with Iran. A spokesman for NROA, Babek Chelebiyali, denied that his group had any association with the Mujahedeen and asserted that they were "opposite organizations."

The letter said the groups were campaigning for a “study the
mother tongue day.” It suggested that the mother tongue referred to was Talysh,
a dying northwest Iranian language that is still spoken by at most a million
people in the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and southern Azerbaijan. The
letter implied that the groups General Karimian was concerned included Azeri
separatists.

The letter appeared to advocate measures to weaken the separatists
by combatting widespread racist attitudes towards Azeris and improving services
in East Azerbaijan. Racial attitudes towards Azeris is something Traktor Sazi
knows a lot about.

“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant
insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are
historically derided as stupid and stubborn. I remember incidents going back to
the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standing observer of Iranian
soccer.

Discussing Azerbaijani policy towards Iran, Elkhan Sahinoglu,
head of the Center for Applied Politics at Baku’s Western Caspian University, noted
that Azerbaijan had no intention of interfering in Iran’s domestic affairs, but
could not “disregard
the future of the Azeris who reside in Iran.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corp said in November that
it had “dismantled
a terrorist team” in East Azerbaijan that was “affiliated with global
arrogance,” a reference to the United States, and its allies, including Saudi
Arabia. The announcement came weeks after Iran said that it had eliminated an
armed group in a frontier area of the province of West Azerbaijan that borders
on Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey and is home to Azeris as well as Kurds.

Columnist Huda al-Husseini highlighted Saudi interest in
Azerbaijan in a recent column on Al Arabiya, the television network owned by
Middle East Broadcasting (MBC) in which the
government reportedly obtained a majority share as a result of Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman’s recent asset and power purge packaged as a campaign
against corruption.

In an article entitled ‘Will
Iran turn Azerbaijan into another Iraq?’, Ms. Al-Husseini, quoting an
anti-Iranian Iraqi author, Raghd
Abdel Rida al-Jaberi, asserted that Azerbaijan feared that it would follow in
the footsteps of Iraq where Iran allegedly had destroyed the Iraqi military and
turned Iraqis into slaves who had been convinced “that washing and rubbing the
feet of Iranians who are heading to visit (Imam) Hussain’s tomb brings them
closer to heaven no matter what they do afterwards.”

Military delegations from the two countries earlier this
month discussed closer military cooperation including holding joint military
exercises “as well as a number of other issues of mutual interest,” according
to Azerbaijani media.

Azerbaijan has also over the years built close military ties
to Israel, which like Saudi Arabia, is staunchly opposed to Iran. Israel and
Azerbaijan discussed, prior to the 2015 international agreement that curtailed
Iran’s nuclear program, using
Azerbaijani airbases had it opted for taking out the Islamic republic’s
nuclear facilities. The agreement put an end to talk about a military strike.

The bottom line is that if Iran is seeking to encircle Saudi
Arabia, Saudi Arabia and Israel are trying to encircle Iran. The mirror image
of Saudi Arabia’s belief that Iraq is Iran’s model for Azerbaijan is an Iranian
suggestion that Lebanon is Israel’s model.

“Tel Aviv wants to Lebanonize (Azerbaijan) under a ‘new
periphery doctrine.’ This means that Tel Aviv intends to create a new periphery
region and encircle Iran through its presence in the (Iraqi) Kurdistan Region
and Azerbaijan,” said Iranian
analyst Salar Seifoddini. Mr. Seifoddini was referring to Israel’s policy
of periphery that seeks to forge relations with those bordering on Israel’s
enemies.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Saudi Arabia, in an indication that it is serious about
shaving off the sharp edges of its Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, has agreed
to surrender
control of the Great Mosque in Brussels.

The decision follows mounting
Belgian criticism of alleged intolerance and supremacism that was being
propagated by the mosque’s Saudi administrators as well as social reforms in
the kingdom introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including a lifting
of the ban on women’s driving, the granting of women’s access to male sporting
events and introduction of modern forms of entertainment.

Relinquishing control of the mosque reportedly strokes with
a Saudi plan to curtail support for foreign mosques and religious and cultural
institutions that have been blamed for sprouting radicalism. With few details
of the plan known, it remains unclear what the curtailing entails.

It also remains unclear what effect it would have. A report
published last month by the Royal Danish Defence College and three Pakistani
think tanks concluded that madrassas or religious seminaries in Pakistan, a
hotbed of militant religious education, were no longer dependent on foreign
funding. It said that foreign funding accounted for a mere seven percent of the
income of madrassas in the country.

Like with Prince
Mohammed’s vow last November to return Saudi Arabia to an undefined “moderate”
form of Islam, its too early to tell what the Brussels decision and the social
reforms mean beyond trying to improve the kingdom’s tarnished image and
preparing it for a beyond-oil, 21st century economic and social
existence.

The decision would at first glance seem to be primarily a
public relations move and an effort to avoid rattling relations with Belgium
and the European Union given that the Brussels mosque is the exception that
confirms the rule. It is one of a relatively small number of Saudi-funded
religious, educational and cultural institutions that was managed by the
kingdom.

The bulk of institutions as well as political groupings and
individuals worldwide who benefitted from Saudi Arabia’s four
decades-long, $100 billion public diplomacy campaign, the single largest in
history, aimed at countering post-1979 Iranian revolutionary zeal, operated
independently.

By doing so, Saudi Arabia has let a genie out of the bottle
that it not only cannot control, but that also leads an independent life of its
own. The Saudi-inspired ultra-conservative environment has also produced groups
like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State that have turned on the kingdom.

Relinquishing control of the Brussels mosque allows Saudi
Arabia to project itself as distancing itself from its roots in
ultra-conservatism that date back to an 18th century power sharing
arrangement between the Al Saud family and Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, a
preacher whose descendants are at the core of the kingdom’s religious
establishment.

The decision, Prince Mohammed’s initial social reforms, and plans
to cut funding notwithstanding, Saudi Arabia appears to be making less of clean
break on the frontlines of its confrontation with Iran where support for ultra-conservative
and/or militant groups is still the name of the game.

Saudi Arabia said last month that it would open a Salafi missionary
centre in the Yemeni province of Al Mahrah on the border with Oman and
the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s ill-fated military intervention in Yemen was
sparked by its conflict with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a Zaydi Shiite
Muslim sect with roots in a region bordering the kingdom, that dates to Saudi
employment of Salafism to counter the group in the 1980s and early this
century.

Saudi militants reported in the last year that Saudi
nationals of Baloch origin were funnelling
large amounts of money into militant madrassas in the Pakistani province of
Balochistan on the border with Iran. Saudi-funded ultraconservative Sunni
Muslim madrassas operated by anti-Shiite militants dominate the region’s
educational landscape.

The money flowed, although it was not clear whether the
Saudi donors had tacit government approval, at a time that Saudi Arabia is
toying with the idea of seeking to destabilize Iran by stirring unrest among
its multiple minorities, including the Baloch.

A militant Islamic scholar, who operates militant madrassas in
the triangle where the borders of Balochistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet, was last
year named a globally
designated terrorist by the US Treasury while he was fundraising in the
kingdom.

Algerian
media reports last month detailed Saudi propagation of a quietist,
apolitical yet supremacist and anti-pluralistic form of Sunni Muslim
ultra-conservatism in the North African country. The media published a letter
by a prominent Saudi scholar that appointed three ultra-conservative Algerian
clerics as the representatives of Salafism.

“While Saudi Arabia tries to promote the image of a
country that is ridding itself of its fanatics, it sends to other countries the
most radical of its doctrines,” asserted independent Algerian newspaper El
Watan.

The decision to relinquish control of the Brussels mosque
that in 1969 had been leased rent-free to the kingdom for a period of 99 years
by Belgian King Baudouin followed a Belgian
parliamentary inquiry into last year’s attack on Brussels’
international Zaventem airport and a metro station in the city in which 32
people were killed. The inquiry advised the government to cancel the mosque
contract on the grounds that Saudi-inspired ultra-conservatism could contribute
to extremism.

Michel Privot of the European Network Against Racism,
estimated that 95 percent of Muslim education in Belgium was provided by
Saudi-trained imams.

“There is a huge demand within Muslim communities to know
about their religion, but most of the offer is filled by a very conservative
Salafi type of Islam sponsored by Saudi Arabia. Other Muslim countries have
been unable to offer grants to students on such a scale,” Mr. Privot said.

The US embassy in
Brussels, in a 2007 cable leaked by Wikileaks, reported that “there is a
noted absence in the life of Islam in Belgium of broader cultural traditions
such as literature, humanism and science which defaults to an ambient practice
of Islam pervaded by a more conservative Salafi interpretation of the faith.”

Saudi Arabia has worked hard in the last year to alter
perceptions of its Islamic-inspired beliefs.

Mohammed
bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, a former Saudi justice minister and secretary
general of the World Muslim League, the group that operates the Brussels mosque
and has served for half a century as a key funding vehicle for ultra-conservatism
insisted on a visited last year to the Belgian capital that Islam “cannot be
equated and judged by the few events and attacks, carried out because of
political or geo-strategic interests. As a religion, Islam teaches humanity,
tolerance, and mutual respect.

Mr. Al-Issa, in a first in a country that long distributed
copies of the Protocols of Zion, an early 20th century anti-Semitic
tract, last month, expressed last month on International Holocaust Remembrance
Day that commemorates Nazi persecution of the Jews “great sympathy
with the victims of the Holocaust, an incident that shook humanity to the
core, and created an event whose horrors could not be denied or underrated by
any fair-minded or peace-loving person.”

Mr. Al-Issa’s comments no doubt also signalled ever closer
ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, who both bitterly oppose Iran’s regional
influence. Nonetheless, they constituted a radical rupture in Saudi Arabia,
where Islamic scholars, often described
Jews as “the scum of the human race,
the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of
the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.”

A Chinese
demand for the extradition of 11 Uyghurs from Malaysia puts the
spotlight on China’s roll-out of one of the world's most intrusive surveillance
systems, military moves to prevent Uyghur foreign fighters from returning to
Xinjiang, and initial steps to export its security approach to countries like
Pakistan.

The 11 were among 25 Uyghurs who escaped
from a Thai detention centre in November through a
hole in the wall, using blankets to climb to the ground.

The extradition request follows similar deportations of Uyghurs
from Thailand and Egypt often with no due process and no immediate evidence
that they were militants.

The escapees were among more than 200 Uighurs detained in Thailand
in 2014. The Uyghurs claimed they were Turkish nationals and demanded that they
be returned to Turkey. Thailand, despite international condemnation, forcibly
extradited to China some 100 of the group in July 2015.

Tens of Uyghurs, who were unable to flee to Turkey in time, were detained
in Egypt in July and are believed to have also been returned to China.
Many of the Uyghurs were students at Al Azhar, one of the foremost institutions
of Islamic learning.

China, increasingly concerned that Uyghurs fighters in Syria and
Iraq will seek to return to Xinjiang or establish bases across the border in
Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the wake of the territorial demise of the Islamic
State, has brutally cracked down on the ethnic minority in its strategic
north-western province, extended its long arm to the Uyghur Diaspora, and is
mulling the establishment of its first land rather than naval foreign military
base.

The crackdown appears, at least for now, to put a lid on
intermittent attacks in Xinjiang itself. Chinese nationals have instead been targeted
in Pakistan, the $50 billion plus crown jewel in China’s Belt and Road
initiative that seeks to link Eurasia to the People’s Republic through
infrastructure.

The attacks are believed to have been carried out by either Baloch
nationalists or militants of the East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM), a
Uighur separatist group that has aligned itself with the Islamic State.

Various other groups, including the Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda
and the Islamic State have threatened
to attack Chinese nationals in response to the alleged repression of
Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

China’s ambassador, Yao Jing, advised the Pakistani interior
ministry two months earlier that Abdul
Wali, an alleged ETIM assassin, had entered the country and was
likely to attack Chinese targets

China has refused to recognize ethnic aspirations of Uyghurs, a
Turkic group, and approached it as a problem of Islamic militancy. Thousands of
Uyghurs are believed to have joined militants in Syria, while hundreds or
thousands more have sought to make their way through Southeast Asia to Turkey.

To counter ethnic and religious aspirations, China has
introduced what must be the world’s
most intrusive surveillance system using algorithms. Streets
in Xinjiang’s cities and villages are pockmarked by cameras; police stations every
500 metres dot roads in major cities; public buildings resemble fortresses; and
authorities use facial recognition and body scanners at highway checkpoints.

The government, in what has the makings of a
re-education program, has opened boarding schools "for local children to
spend their entire week in a Chinese-speaking environment, and then only going
home to parents on the weekends," according to China
scholar David Brophy. Adult Uyghurs, who have stuck to
their Turkic language, have been ordered to study Chinese at night schools.

Nightly television programs feature oath-swearing
ceremonies," in which participants pledge to root out "two-faced
people," the term used for Uyghur Communist Party members who are believed
to be not fully devoted to Chinese policy.

The measures in Xinjiang go beyond an Orwellian citizen
scoring system that is being introduced that scores a person’s
political trustworthiness. The system would determine what benefits a citizen
is entitled to, including access to credit, high speed internet service and
fast-tracked visas for travel based on data garnered from social media and
online shopping data as well as scanning of irises and content on mobile phones
at random police checks.

The system envisions deployment of explosive detectors
and scanners to “cover major roads, case-prone areas and crowded places…in
urban areas to conduct real-time monitoring and 24-hour video recording.”

A national fibre optic backbone would be built for
internet traffic as well as the terrestrial distribution of broadcast media.
Pakistani media would cooperate with their Chinese counterparts in the “dissemination
of Chinese culture.”

The plan described the backbone as a “cultural
transmission carrier” that would serve to “further enhance mutual understanding
between the two peoples and the traditional friendship between the two
countries.”

The measures were designed to address the risks to
CPEC that the plan identified as “Pakistani politics, such as competing
parties, religion, tribes, terrorists, and Western intervention” as well as
security. “The security situation is the worst in recent years,” the plan said.

Chinese
military personnel have reportedly been in the mountainous
Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of territory in north-eastern Afghanistan that
extends to China and separates Tajikistan from Pakistan since March last year.

The importance China attributes to protecting itself against
Uyghur militancy and extending its protective shield beyond its borders was
reflected in the recent appointment as its ambassador to Afghanistan, Liu
Jinsong, who was raised in Xinjiang and served as a director of the Belt
and Road initiative’s $15 billion Silk Road Fund.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

The outcome of a power struggle in the Maldives that has
sparked declaration of an emergency, military control of parliament, and
arrests of senior figures, is likely to shape the geopolitical designs of
China, India, the United States and Saudi Arabia at a strategic interface of
the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.

The struggle between authoritarian president Abdulla Yameen
and exiled former president and onetime political prisoner Mohamed Nasheed, a
staunch critic of Chinese and Saudi interests, has a direct bearing on the future
of the two countries’ significant investment that has already reshaped the archipelago’s
social and political life.

The struggle also involves Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the
politician who served longest as the country’s leader, Mr. Gayoom’s son-in-law,
Mohamed Nadheem, and senior figures in the judiciary, including Chief Justice
Abdulla Saeed. All were detained last week on charges of corruption and
attempting to overthrow the government.

Mr. Yameen, in what United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein dubbed an "all-out
assault on democracy," declared the state of emergency after the Supreme
Court ordered the release from prison of opposition politicians and their
retrial. The state emergency, gives the government sweeping powers to make
arrests, search and seize property, and restrict freedom of assembly.

The court ruling appeared to enhance Mr. Nasheed’s chances
of challenging Mr. Yameen in elections scheduled for later this year by giving the
opposition a majority in the country's legislative assembly.

Politics in the Maldives, a strategically located 820-kilometre-long
chain of atolls with a population of 420,000 that is best known as a tourism
hotspot threatened with demise by climate change, are convoluted. Mr. Gayoom is
Mr. Yameen’s half-brother and opposed to the president together with Mr.
Nasheed, who unseated Mr. Gayoom in the country's first democratic elections in
2008.

Mr. Yameen, who came to power in 2013 in a disputed election
that opponents say was rigged and has since been accused of eroding democracy, allowing
Islamic militancy to flourish, cracking down on dissent and jailing opposition
leaders, has been amenable to Chinese and Saudi interests that analysts believe
could lead to the establishment of military bases in the archipelago.

China sees the islands as a node in its “string of pearls” –
a row of ports on key trade and oil routes linking the Middle Kingdom to the
Middle East – while for Saudi Arabia, the atolls also have the advantage of
lying a straight three-hour shot from the coast of regional rival and arch-foe,
Iran.

The possible building of Chinese and/or Saudi military bases
in the Maldives would complement the independent development of both nations’
military outposts in Djibouti, an East African nation on a key energy export
route at the mouth of the Red Sea.

They “want to have a base in the Maldives that would
safeguard trade routes – their oil routes – to their new markets. To have
strategic installations, infrastructure,” Mr.
Nasheed charged last year.

The United States. through its Sri Lanka-based ambassador,
and India have primarily sought to counter China’s growing influence by pressuring
on Mr. Yameen to adhere to democratic principles. Mr. Nasheed was in the Sri
Lankan capital of Colombo when the state of emergency was declared and like
incarcerated Judge Saeed, who was appointed by Mr. Nasheed, has maintained
contact with Indian authorities.

Mr. Yameen’s election in 2013 derailed negotiations with the
United States for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), that would have tightened
military cooperation with the Maldives and given the US military greater access
to the archipelago. A return to power by Mr. Nasheed, who in 2009 became the
Maldives’ first democratically elected president, would have likely revived the
negotiations.

Mr. Yameen, in a further turn towards China, in 2016
withdrew the Maldives from the Commonwealth of Nations after the association of
former British colonies threatened to suspend it for chipping away at
democratic institutions.

Saudi Arabia sees its soft power in the Maldives as a way of
convincing China it is the kingdom rather than Iran that is the key link in China’s
Belt and Road initiative that aims to link Eurasia to the People’s Republic through
Chinese-funded infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia, to lay the ground for the investment, has in
recent years funded religious institutions in the Maldives and offered
scholarships for students wanting to pursue religious studies at the kingdom’s
ultra-conservative universities in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

The funding has pushed the Maldives towards greater
intolerance and public piety. Public partying, mixed dancing and Western beach
garb have become acceptable only within expensive tourist resorts.

The Maldives is, moreover, believed to have contributed more
Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq on a per-capita
basis than any
other country that was not a party to the conflicts.

The Saudis, despite being bitterly opposed to the Islamic State,
have had, according to Mr. Nasheed, “a good run of propagating their world view
to the people of the Maldives and they’ve done that for the last three decades.
They’ve now, I think, come to the view that they have enough sympathy to get a
foothold.”

Messrs. Nasheed and Gayoom have urged India to intervene to
force Mr. Yameen to release the judges and other political prisoners. Mr.
Nasheed went a step further by calling on India to deploy a "physical
presence" in the archipelago. India, which rarely intervenes in the
affairs of foreign countries, helped put down an attempted coup in the Maldives
in the 1980s.

In a statement, India advised Mr. Yameen to abide by the
rule of law. "In the spirit of democracy and rule of law, it is imperative
for all organs of the Government of Maldives to respect and abide by the order
of the court," the statement said.

The US State Department charged that "President Yameen
has systematically alienated his coalition, jailed or exiled every major
opposition political figure, deprived elected members of parliament of their
right to represent their voters in the legislature, revised laws to erode human
rights... and weakened the institutions of government."

Mr. Yameen, backed by China and Saudi Arabia, and in the
absence of more strident Indian and/or US action, is likely to maintain the
upper hand. He appears to enjoy the support of his military and police despite
the sacking
of the police commission immediately after the declaration of the state of
emergency. To drive the point home, state television showed pictures of
military and police officers pledging to sacrifice their lives "in the
defense of the lawful government."

Monday, February 5, 2018

A host of conflicts, stretching across the Asian landmass
from the Middle East to Southeast Asia and northwest China, are likely to spark
violence, complicate economic development, and dash hopes for sustainable stability.

The conflicts and tensions range from ethnic strife in
Kurdish areas of Syria and Iran, mortally wounded Israeli-Palestinian peace
efforts, embattled Baloch nationalism in Pakistan, disposed Rohingya in
Southeast Asia, and widespread discontent in Iran, to iron-grip repression in
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Xinjiang. Individually and collectively, they promise
to create black swans and festering wounds that threaten economic growth and
social development.

Stripped to their bare essence, the conflicts and tensions have
one thing in common: a quest for either cultural, ethnic or national, or
political rights or a combination of those, that governments not only refuse to
recognize but are willing to suppress with brutal force.

Repression and military action are designed to suppress
political, ethnic and/or national, and economic and social grievances in the
false belief that a combination of long-term suppression and economic
development will weaken ethnic and/or national and political aspirations as
well as undermine dissent.

That is true in case of the Rohingya and Uyghurs as well as
for brutal repression in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and northwest China, and
military actions such as the Turkish intervention in Syria’s Afrin.

Problems in the Middle East and South Asia are aggravated by
a debilitating struggle for regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran
that threaten to destabilize the Islamic republic and Pakistan, have already
produced a devastating war and a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, and are
dragging the Horn of Africa into its orbit.

If history teaches anything, it is that only a minority of
autocrats have achieved economic and social development. General Augusto
Pinochet ensured that Chile is the only South American member of the
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), albeit at a high human
cost, while Asia gave birth to tigers like South Korea and Taiwan.

Moreover, Asia’s multiple conflicts and tensions do not
distract from the fact that by and large, the continent is flourishing
economically.

History, however, also teaches that ethnic and/or national
aspirations explode with vehemence the moment opportunity arises. Seventy years
of communist rule in the Soviet Union failed to smother nationalist sentiment
in parts of the empire like Chechnya and the Caucasus or erase nationalist
differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Forty-seven years of communism did not prevent nationalist
sentiment from breaking Yugoslavia apart in a series of bloody wars in the
1990s in the wake of the demise of the Iron Curtain.

Carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire, modern Turkey
has failed to erase demands for Kurdish cultural, if not ethnic or national
aspirations, through economic development and political integration based on
the principle of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the visionary who founded the republic,
that “happy is he who is a Turk.”

Similarly, Palestinian nationalism is alive and kicking 51
years into Israeli occupation of lands conquered during the 1967 Middle East
war.

The aftermath of the 2011 Arab popular revolts, involving a
concerted counterrevolution co-engineered by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi
Arabia, has laid bare the essence of current conflicts and disputes: a
determination of regimes to impose policies on minorities or states at whatever
cost.

The UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar
is a case in point as are Asia’s multiple ethnic conflicts. They erupt in a
world in which post-colonial borders are being called into question in
countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar and Pakistan.

The Rohingya, amid the dizzying array of ethnic and national
conflicts stretching from the Middle East or West Asia to China in the East,
exemplify the problem in, perhaps, its purest form. Potentially, the Rohingya
could become Southeast Asia’s Palestine.

What makes the Rohingya unique is the fact that their
aspiration, unlike Palestinians, Kurds, Baloch or Uyghurs, does not involve
attachment to a specific piece of land despite a centuries-old history in the
Myanmar state of Rakhine. That is also what potentially enables creative
thinking about a solution that could open the door to innovative thinking about
a multitude of other conflicts.

To many Rohingya, lingering in abysmal conditions in
Bangladesh’s Cox Bazaar, after some 650,000 fled repression and terror in
Myanmar, securing a sense of belonging on whatever territory that guarantees
them protection from persecution as well as economic and social development, is
more important than returning to an uncertain existence in Rakhine state. “All
I want, is a place to which I can belong,” one refugee said.

Few Rohingya, analysts and officials believe that an
agreement that in theory allows Rohingya in Bangladesh to return to Rakhine
state will solve the problem. Even if the Rohingya were allowed to return in
significant numbers, something that many doubt, nothing in Myanmar government
policies and statements suggests that they would be anything more than a barely
tolerated, despised ethnic group in a country that does not welcome them.

The makings of a Palestine-like conflict that would embroil
not only Myanmar but also Bangladesh and that could spread its tentacles
further abroad are evident. In a rare interview with Al Jazeera, Mohammed, a
spokesman for the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) using a false name,
predicted that suicide bombings constitute the next phase of their effort to
secure a safe and stable existence.

The Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, a charity associated with
Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of South Asia’s deadliest groups, claimed in December that
it had established operations in Rakhine state where it had distributed
blankets and cash.

"We attacked them (the Myanmar military) because they
refuse to give us our basic rights as citizens. Again and again, [the] Myanmar
government lies to the world. They say they treat us well and give us rights,
but they don't. We are unable to travel from one place to another. We are not
allowed to run a business. We are not allowed to go to university. The police
and military use various way to suppress us. They beat, torture and humiliate
us. That is why we decided to stand up," Mohammed said.

Preventing the Rohingya issue from spiralling out of control
and becoming a problem that can no longer be contained to a specific territory,
much like the multitude of similar conflicts, disputes, and repression-based
regime survival strategies across Asia, requires out-of-the box thinking. Short-term
repression and efforts to impose one party’s will at best buys time and sets
the scene for avoidable explosions.

With out-of-the-box thinking a rare commodity, nationalism
and protectionism on the rise, and regimes, emboldened by an international
community unwilling to stand up for basic rights, able to go to extremes like
the use of chemical weapons against rebels in the Syrian province of Idlib,
long-term prospects for stable and secure development in Asia are dimmed and potentially
threatened by predictable black swans.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile